Browsing All Posts filed under »Music«

To mark Earth Hour 2013, my husband Paul recorded this video of one of his compositions, in one take. Can you spot the “secret ingredients” that made this musical dish special? And can you tell how old things were repurposed to create musical magic? :) Advertisements

This is something we have a right to ask our government officials right now. The United States is five days away from “fundamentally changing” their country, according to CNN. Do we want to wait ’till 2010 to start doing something? *Thanks to Tanya Hamada of YPS/YouthVotePhilippines for showing us this video.*

Another unique feature of the Rainforest World Music Festival was its workshops. Every day, before the nighttime festivities began, the performers would be gathered with different audience groups and would share their own thoughts and experiences regarding their instruments. There were 27 workshops throughout the three-day event, tackling themes such as “When drummers and dancers meet”, “Women’s Voices”, “The high art of improvisation”, “Fusing musical cultures”, “Songs from Africa and the African diaspora”, and so on.
Each workshop brought together performers and audiences from around the world; each one captured the imaginations of its audiences. Each one showed what can happen when walls are broken down, when harsh voices are drowned out, and when the collective consciousness is allowed to emerge.
This made me think: What if we made a serious effort to bring young people from war zones together to make music and cultivate shared experiences—would there still be wars 10, 20 years from now?

One performer who struck me the most was Adel Salameh. Dubbed by the BBC as “one of the world’s finest oud players,” Adel is a Palestinian national who has been playing and promoting traditional Arab music around the world for over 20 years now. I was taken in by his very solemn, almost monk-like appearance, his deep voice, and his stately composure. During his group’s press conference, he reiterated how important it was for him to bring his music out so that the rest of the world will know what Palestinians are going through right now.
“Palestinians can be artists too, but the whole world thinks we’re all terrorists,” he said emphatically.
That got me. After the press conference, I tried to corner him for an interview.

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